
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 15, 1990                   TAG: 9005150645
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/2   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

DE KLERK TO VISIT BEFORE MANDELA

South African President F.W. de Klerk will meet with President Bush at the White House several days before black leader Nelson Mandela, for talks on dismantling their country's racial-segregation system.

U.S. officials said today de Klerk will visit the White House on June 18 in the first official call by a South African president in more than 30 years.

Mandela, who will tour six U.S. cities and be honored with a ticker-tape parade in New York City, arrives in the United States about June 20 and will meet Bush about a week later, officials of his African National Congress said Monday.

Bush issued the invitations to both men last February, as soon as de Klerk released Mandela from prison, where he served 27 years for plotting to overthrow the South African government.

De Klerk's decision to free Mandela and lift a ban on the ANC opened the way for talks between the white minority government and the black majority on rewriting the country's constitution to grant blacks political power.

U.S. officials said the decision to schedule de Klerk's visit before Mandela's was dictated by the two men's busy itineraries and did not signal a preference for either leader.

But organizers of the Mandela visit, a coalition of labor and black civic groups, were angered especially because they had objected to Bush's invitation to de Klerk in the first place.

Randall Robinson, head of the TransAfrica organization, said inviting de Klerk to the White House before Mandela was "insensitive" in light of the South African government's oppression of blacks and its lengthy imprisonment of Mandela.

Joseph Lowery, president of the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said Mandela is expected to meet with Atlanta business and civil rights leaders and lay a wreath at the tomb of the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

Mandela, 71, will address a joint meeting of Congress to thank U.S. leaders for their support during his incarceration and for their efforts to obtain his release.

But he is also expected to warn that despite some reforms adopted by the white government of President F.W. de Klerk, "the impression that apartheid is gone is wrong; it remains firmly in place," said the ANC's Washington representative, Lindiwe Mabuza.

Mandela will urge U.S. leaders to keep intact the economic sanctions imposed by Congress in 1986 so that pressure is maintained on the South African government to carry through with the reforms, she said.

by CNB